PROMETHEUS Reaction (((NO SPOILERS till June 8)))

[Bob Gundu]

I saw the attempt at all those themes. But it felt like a bad school play trying to make sense of it.

[Bill Anderson]

Gavin, "they" did NOT fail at the "basic creation mythology": the mythology must take on a new slant given the revelations of alien engineers. My, how rigid can one be? Everything is up for grabs, reinterpretation. Myths are just that, story creations.... constantly evolving, constantly being recreated, and reassessed as technology and knowledge grow.

[Chris Harless]

Wow.....when i walked out of the theater dazed and confused... I thought is was just me.

Bottom line...Beautifully Photographed. Incredible Visual Effects.

Script and pacing ruined it.

[Alex Lindblom]

Couple of quick points Scott.

Well first of all Theron's character, may very well be an android, “father” doesn't have to mean biological father at all, but that's neither here nor there just an observation.

When I said skipping along and the rest of that paragraph I was referring to the movie as hole, and not Shaw's character only. But yes the abortion scene is the best one in the movie. But she certainly heals fast doesn't, she but ok I can go with that.

Now you are telling me again that Shaw was on a quest to kill God. But that was not what I was shown, she's looking for the engineers yes, but she has no animosity towards them, its only when her life is threatened, when she is forced to taken action and kill them but that's in self defense, and by that point we are basically back to a rehash of Alien 1 but without any suspension since the film did not build to it.

Again I could have gone with any type of story they wanted, why not a Kill Bill against God, could have been good.

But they give me nothing, in the end all we get is a long long set up, a "travelog" with a lot of "story inconsistency",which in the end turns it to your of the shelf survival horror, and we get the final girl, and that's it -- roll credits...

[Scott Crawley]

I didn't say she was on a quest to kill God. I said she was on a quest to find God and reconcile her mother's death... Have her questions answered... Find enlightenment. As it turned out she had to kill God in self defense, but she didn't set out to do it.

The android hypothesis is welcome, and one I had not considered. With David for a "brother" it makes sense. I like it. Now I'm itching for a sequel.

Was she wearing a helmet in the open hangar bay? I can't seem to remember.

Couple of quick points Scott.

Well first of all Theron's character, may very well be an android, “father” doesn't have to mean biological father at all, but that's neither here nor there just an observation.

When I said skipping along and the rest of that paragraph I was referring to the movie as hole, and not Shaw's character only. But yes the abortion scene is the best one in the movie. But she certainly heals fast doesn't, she but ok I can go with that.

Now you are telling me again that Shaw was on a quest to kill God. But that was not what I was shown, she's looking for the engineers yes, but she has no animosity towards them, its only when her life is threatened, when she is forced to taken action and kill them but that's in self defense, and by that point we are basically back to a rehash of Alien 1 but without any suspension since the film did not build to it.

Again I could have gone with any type of story they wanted, why not a Kill Bill against God, could have been good.

But they give me nothing, in the end all we get is a long long set up, a "travelog" with a lot of "story inconsistency",which in the end turns it to your of the shelf survival horror, and we get the final girl, and that's it -- roll credits...

edit: The more I think about Meredith Vickers the less plausible the Vickers as robot hypothesis seems. There are too many clues to suggest that she is human, I think.

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Wow, those are lots of thoughtful interpretations there Gavin. Thanks for the stimulating conversation. How can you see all of those possibilities and still call the film mindless and boring?

Cheers,
Scott

I can fill in holes with all manner of story. We're story tellers. If you give redusers a picture of a guy sitting in a chair reading a news paper some people will come up with a story that he's contemplating the cancer he's dieing of. But that doesn't mean it was *in* the movie. That's just making shit up and projecting onto a blank canvas. I hate blank canvases. It's lazy.

I can do this with Transformers too or any movie. But that doesn't mean it was part of the movie. Stare at clouds long enough and you see pictures. String a couple cloud images together and you'll probably be able to 'make sense' of that random noise. That's not storytelling that's just the joy of the human mind doing what it does best.

[Bill Anderson]

The canvas isn't blank. Interpretations are what keep art alive. Some are worthy, others are not. Seeing images in clouds, and plumbing the depth of them is a very valid approach. We project. "Beasts abstract not".

[Scott Crawley]

I can dig that.

As a side point, (Just to be a PITA) did you see The Cutting Edge? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0428441/ In it they show an editing example of juxtaposition. They show an actor with a blank expression and intercut disparate subjects or objects. When polled audience members claimed to see different emotions in the man's face when juxtaposed with different footage. It shows the power of editing, the power of film making and the value of a blank canvas.

It is a large part of the reason why we can each see the same film and see two different things. It can be the playground of the subtle craftsman and the proving ground of a hack. I am in awe of the blank canvas in the right hands. Whether or not Prometheus does any of that effectively is up for debate. I'm not yet asserting that is the case. I'll have to see it many more times before I try and claim that. ;-)

I can fill in holes with all manner of story. We're story tellers. If you give redusers a picture of a guy sitting in a chair reading a news paper some people will come up with a story that he's contemplating the cancer he's dieing of. But that doesn't mean it was *in* the movie. That's just making shit up and projecting onto a blank canvas. I hate blank canvases. It's lazy.

I can do this with Transformers too or any movie. But that doesn't mean it was part of the movie. Stare at clouds long enough and you see pictures. String a couple cloud images together and you'll probably be able to 'make sense' of that random noise. That's not storytelling that's just the joy of the human mind doing what it does best.

I have to reconsider this. The opening segment seems to suggest that the Engineers did create man. They could have been terraforming any planet, but in juxtaposition to the rest of the story it is reasonable to infer that it was Earth.

The Engineers may or may not be the creators of mankind. The film doesn't take a position on that really. for that it is infinitely more interesting.

[Bill Anderson]

If one believes that a man reading a newspaper is contemplating the cancer he is dying of, one usually puts forth one's reason for the belief. It is only then that we accept or reject the line of reasoning. Not because he believes, but why he believes. And is Prometheus akin to the simplicity of a man reading a newspaper? Is that a valid analogy?


What are we to make of a Kasemir Malevich black square painting? Do we see only a black square? Laziness? Or do we see it as being the foundation of radical shifts in art? Shifts that have enlightened us to the power of non objectivity and abstract art and so much more? All these ideas and forces born from a painted black square.


Does it seem unreasonable to imagine that ages ago we sat around a campfire and pondered life, and, observing how vulnerable and how quickly newborns perish without care, we concluded ( having no knowledge of the theory of evolution) that the first human must have been born of an otherworldly "parent", "God", in order to have formed and survived the first days? This is not any more sound a line of reasoning than concluding that a man reading a newspaper is thinking of cancer. But it is far more reaching nonetheless.

[Bill Anderson]

Scott, I haven't seen the Cutting Edge, but the method is known as the Kuleshov Effect, after Lev Kuleshov experimented with the idea of montage, in the 1920's. Sergei Eisentstein put his own genius touch to the idea, in his film "Battleship Potemkin".